April 2017
Volume 59, No. 2 | Go to abstracts
Articles
Page 143
Medicinal Marijuana Production Creates Problem Residential Properties: A Routine Activity Theory Explanation and a Situational Crime-Prevention Solution
Joseph Clare, Len Garis, Paul Maxim
Page 168
“I’ve Lost Some Sleep over It”: Secondary Trauma in the Provision of Support to Older Fraud Victims
Cassandra Cross
Page 198
When Is a “War” a “Wave?” Two Approaches for the Detection of Waves in Gang Homicides
Martin Bouchard, Sadaf Hashimi
Page 227
L’art de raconter une bonne histoire : analyse de la couverture médiatique des gangs de rue à la télévision et sur les plateformes numériquesJ de Radio-Canada
Patricia Brosseau, Jean-Pierre Guay
Page 251
Crime Seasonality across Multiple Jurisdictions in British Columbia, Canada
Shannon J. Linning, Martin A. Andresen, Amir H. Ghaseminejad, Paul J. Brantingham
Abstracts
Medicinal Marijuana Production Creates Problem Residential Properties: A Routine Activity Theory Explanation and a Situational Crime-Prevention Solution
Joseph Clare, Len Garis, Paul Maxim
Objectives: Illicit production of marijuana on residential properties creates significant health and safety problems. Health Canada grants licences to individuals to produce medicinal marijuana for personal use, conditional on their compliance with all appropriate regulations. Health Canada does not inspect licensees’ activities to monitor regulatory compliance, and privacy legislation prevents Health Canada from sharing licence holders’ details with third parties. This research examines how effective this administrative structure is at preventing medicinal marijuana from being produced in residential buildings by licence holders. Methods: The indoor production of marijuana requires substantial amounts of electricity. From 2005, addresses in Surrey, British Columbia, with exceptionally high power consumption have been provided to the municipal government for the purposes of undertaking fire safety inspections. This paper examines the outcome of inspections at 1,204 marijuana-production sites (n = 252 medicinal, n = 952 illicit) to see whether the licensing process prevents marijuana production in residential buildings. The illicit-production sites inspected by the city are used as a non-random comparison group for the medicinal sites. Findings: This inspection process has identified an increasing number of medicinal- (relative to illicit-) production sites in recent years. Medicinal-production operations were significantly less likely to be located in residential buildings. However, the medicinal residential sites that were detected were located in equivalent parts of the city to the illicit residential operations. Residential medicinal-production sites presented fewer electrical and biological safety problems relative to illicit-production sites, but all residential medicinal-production sites breached zoning and legislative requirements relating to land use, building safety, and structural integrity. Conclusions: The current administrative structure for licensing medicinal marijuana production does not prevent residential buildings from being used as marijuana-production sites. Routine activity theory is used as a platform to explain how additional situational prevention mechanisms can be used to prevent licensed medicinal marijuana production from creating building-related health and safety problems in the future.
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“I’ve Lost Some Sleep over It”: Secondary Trauma in the Provision of Support to Older Fraud Victims
Cassandra Cross
The Senior Support Unit (SSU) operates from the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre and uses volunteers (all seniors themselves) to provide telephone support to older fraud victims across Canada. Many fraud victims have experienced significant trauma, and working with them to assist in their recovery can be difficult. Secondary trauma is well established in other contexts as affecting both professionals and volunteers who work with victims. However, secondary trauma has not been examined in the context of supporting fraud victims. Based on interviews with 21 SSU volunteers, it is argued that there are several indicators of secondary trauma evident in the experiences of the SSU volunteers. This article examines the challenges that exist in supporting fraud victims within a secondary trauma framework. This includes the distressing nature of the calls, maintaining boundaries, repeat victims, and suicidal victims. However, it also describes the coping mechanisms that the SSU volunteers have put in place to enable their continued support, primarily focusing on the positives and seeking collegial support. Despite the trauma associated with helping fraud victims, the SSU has developed a strong and positive culture that supports volunteers in that capacity. The article concludes with what can be learned from the SSU example.
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When Is a “War” a “Wave?” Two Approaches for the Detection of Waves in Gang Homicides
Martin Bouchard, Sadaf Hashimi
Gang violence and gang “wars” are often described as coming in waves, but little empirical work has been conducted to distinguish between actual “waves” of violence and the more common ups and downs that trends in homicides typically go through. We propose two approaches for the detection of waves of gang-related homicides in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia for a time period (2006–12) when these were considered to occur at a high rate: (1) the monthly waves approach, whereby monthly crime data are used to map the trends in gang-related violence, and (2) the micro-approach, whereby crime waves are detected by examining significant deviations from the mean number of days between homicides. The results show that four distinct monthly waves could be detected between 2006 and 2012, each capturing the peak moments of known gang conflicts. The micro-approach led to the discovery of 12 waves, allowing for a more sophisticated understanding of the trends in gang violence. While the identification of “trigger events” before the rise of a wave was relatively straightforward for the four monthly waves, not all 12 micro-waves could be associated with a clear trigger event using open source data. The two approaches should be used in complementarity for a meaningful and accurate understanding of trends in gang violence.
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L’art de raconter une bonne histoire : analyse de la couverture médiatique des gangs de rue à la télévision et sur les plateformes numériques de Radio-Canada
Patricia Brosseau, Jean-Pierre Guay
Media content is the result of a special filtering process. Concerning criminality, newsworthiness determines the selection of an event and the media attention. The violence of the crime, the victimization of more than one person, vulnerability, or a lack of relationship between the two protagonists are all indicators to evaluate how interesting a news story is. Some of these elements are often used by journalists to cover events related to street gangs. However, very few studies have been made on the media’s interest about gangs and their effect on news treatment. In total, 417 reports from Radio-Canada’s TV channel and website content have compared the media treatment of 210 reports about street gangs with 207 reports on general crime. The results suggest that reports about street gangs have greater media coverage, especially in length and details. Independent of the elements that determine what makes good news, those involving gangs make interesting stories.
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Crime Seasonality across Multiple Jurisdictions in British Columbia, Canada
Shannon J. Linning, Martin A. Andresen, Amir H. Ghaseminejad, Paul J. Brantingham
Seasonal changes in crime have been documented since the mid-1800s, but no definitive consensus has been reached regarding universal annual patterns. Researchers also tend to focus on a single city over a particular time period, and, due to methodological differences, studies can often be difficult to compare. As such, this study investigates the seasonal fluctuations of crime across eight cities in British Columbia, Canada, between 2000 and 2006. Uniform Crime Report data, representing four crime types (assault, robbery, motor vehicle theft, and break and enter) were used in negative binomial or Poisson count models and regressed against trend, weather, and illumination variables. Results suggest that temperature changes impacted assault levels, few weather variables affected the occurrence of robberies, and fluctuations in property crime types were variable across the cities. Moreover, rain and snow had a deterrent effect on crime in cities that were not used to such weather conditions. These findings imply that (a) changes in weather patterns modify peoples’ routine activities and, in turn, influence when crime is committed; (b) universal crime seasonality patterns should not be assumed across all cities; and (c) crime seasonality should be studied at a disaggregate or crime-specific level.